DevOps practices are a powerful tools to build productive, engaged teams who constantly learn and regularly deliver value to their customers. High DevOps performers report greater workplace satisfaction than their peers. But implementing DevOps isn’t a matter of being great at writing code: to become a high DevOps performer, you need the powerful catalyst of executive support. In this talk, we will discuss the value of DevOps from the perspectives of CEOs, CIOs/CTOs, and Managers. We will explore how the role of CIOs and CTOs are undergoing a major transformation, and how DevOps aligns with that transformation. You will leave the session with a fresh take on how to discuss DevOps with company leaders, and an understanding of how to explain the value of DevOps to people in these roles.

Mark Primary

Join Jeff and guest speaker from HP to hear their story. In today’s complex world, we know inherently simple gets it done now. And “now” is the typical deadline of our supervisors. The difficulty is they demand tough requirements and often make changes that take extra time and staff. In HP’s world of 3D printing, they discovered a new simplicity in consuming data daily, pivoting quickly in new directions, and keeping their users in control within IT boundaries. Learn about HP 3D printing ingenuity in your own back yard and how Interject provided a spreadsheet platform for them to run even faster and collaborate on data in record time. What took months or weeks, now takes days or hours, and users need minimal training.
Be the first 20 to attend and pick a cold red bull or hot latte/mocha that will be waiting. Even better, at the end of the session we will be giving another $300 lightsaber like last year that is too cool for the kids. Space is limited so arrive early.

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Let me show you how easy it is to use PowerShell to accomplish many everyday tasks straight from the command line with the community developed module dbatools.
Afraid of PowerShell?
Worried its too complicated?
Don't want to go through the learning curve?
Let me show you with plenty of demos how easy and straight forward it can be and I will save you time starting Monday
Want to restore an entire servers databases to the latest available point in time of the backups in just one line?
Be useful to know the Last DBCC Check for your entire estate in only one line of code?
Need to test your restores but its complicated?
and many many more
All this in a fast paced, fun session

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Discover the ways Azure transforms AI and Predictive Analytics making it easier and more accessible through services like Azure Machine Learning and pre-built Cognitive Services, while also supporting custom development and deep-learning.

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TSQL is a necessity when interacting with SQL Server so knowing can be half the battle. Performance is always good as the database starts to grow, but building in resilience when you begin is a greater advantage than refactoring. I will go over 5 key things to know when you write TSQL, use DataTypes and/or variables in comparisons and you will also learn about the procedure cache and how to avoid pitfalls there. This is a beginners session but the concepts in this session are a great foundation to begin with. If you are looking for a solid foundation to build on and need the basics to start, this session is definitely for you.

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With the August 2018 version of Power BI, you can now write DAX measures that generate dynamic chart images using the SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) standard. This means the long sought-after chart types of "small multiples" and "spark lines" are suddenly available, letting report authors create a sort of pivot table, not of numbers, but of dozens of tiny dynamic charts. However, this only works if you know how to leverage DAX to write dynamic SVG code, a rather oblique use of the language. In this session we'll be showing users how to do exactly that live on stage. We'll create several chart measures, from KPI indicators, to spark lines, to the game-changing bullet charts. Folks will walk away with some basic patterns they can use to create their own chart measures at home in no time at all.

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Python is the one of the most popular programming languages used today and one of the most useful tools in the data scientist's tool belt especially for machine learning. Python is integrated into the Microsoft stack in tools like Azure ML and now SQL Server 2017.
The session will be an introduction to the Python language including:
1.) Installing and Configuring Python
2.) Access and Manipulate Data
3.) Install and Manage Packages
4.) Create and Use Objects/Variables
5.) Control Flows and Functions
6.) Managing the Python installation in MSSQL
Attend this session to learn how to use Python to take your data analytics to the next level. We will use Python, SQL Server and the Anaconda distribution of Python to learn the basics of Python and how it is integrated in the Microsoft stack! We will walk through a simple deployment of a machine learning model to see how it all works together and learns some basic data science fundamentals.
No prior statistics knowledge needed.

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What are containers? When would you use them? Are they supported for production? Do they run on Windows? Do they run on Linux? Can they persist data?
These are just a few of the questions we will answer in this session. Containers are all the rage today - don't get left behind!

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This session is an introduction to the unique functionality offered by COZYROC to create integration packages that dynamically map columns at runtime. The standard SSIS Data Flow Task can only use static metadata which is defined when the package is initially designed. The mapping of columns is configured and remains unchanged until the package is re-opened and design changes are made, thus costing maintenance time and effort. Data Flow Task Plus extends the capabilities of the standard Microsoft Data Flow task in that it allows you to set up dynamic data flows, thus eliminating maintenance time and effort. Changes to tables and columns are automatically incorporated at run time without the need to change and redeploy the package. Columns and fields are mapped automatically at run time. Furthermore, the initial design time and effort may be greatly reduced when dealing with huge amounts of data in a large number of files and/or databases.

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Power BI Desktop is often shown as a self-service reporting and analytics tool, but it can also be used earlier in the development cycle for prototyping and data modeling and can do it quicker and easier than other tools made for this purpose. In this session we will go through multiple examples showing how Power BI Desktop is the perfect tool to quickly model data from multiple data sources (including web sites, databases, cubes, online services and even flat files) perform quick actions to cleanse and connect these various sources to each other using M and DAX functions built-in to Power BI Desktop. Once this model has been built it can be used to create some quick reports to show how this will be used to help get a project approved/funded. Best of all using Power BI Desktop to do all of this is completely free to use, no licensing or Power BI login required!

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Unit Testing and Test-Driven Development are common practices in application development. In SQL development we’ve even got tSQLT! In the realm of BI with desperate systems, integration layers, data warehouses and even cubes we need a better approach.
In this session, we’ll discuss different problem scenarios and practical solutions. We’ll identify the need to look at the data from the business perspective and define specific integrity checks to ensure our data is accurate. Then the fun part! Using the Microsoft BI tool-set, we will walk-through a working solution demonstrating a way to efficiently centralize this process.
At the end of the session, we’ll all still agree that we can’t use a unit test or record counts to ensure that data is accurate. You will have a simple solution that you can start with to work in your environment and look at data testing & integrity differently.

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They're just numbers, right? A date's a date. It's just string data, who cares? I can't tell you how many times I've heard these phrases. This session will help you understand why choosing the correct data type for your data is so important. It affects data quality, storage and performance. It can even produce incorrect query results.

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Not long ago, being a Microsoft DBA meant be specialized in Microsoft SQL Server and all the whistles and bells shipped together in the same box. That was the on-prem age.
Now in the cloud computing age, all cloud providers support multiple database engines in order to welcome all applications to their infrastructure. SQL Server is not always the way to go for an application.
In this session full of demos, we will discuss what it takes to be an all-rounded Azure cloud DBA, best applicable scenarios, price budgeting and tuning.

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There are many ways of detecting and capturing changes to the data in your business system in order to populate your data warehouse. In this session we will compare and contrast several methods for loading slowly-changing dimensions in your ETL solutions, including SSIS design patterns, T-SQL code, change data capture (CDC) and temporal tables.
Attendees will gain a full understanding of the pros and cons of each of these solutions and become confident in choosing and implementing them in their own ETL solutions.

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You might have heard "don't use cursors, they are slow!". In this presentation, you will learn what actually means: you should normally write set-based statements instead and I will explain why they generally are faster than writing your own loops. But I will also look at situations where using a loop for one reason or another is preferrable, and you will learn that the best way to run a loop in most cases is exactly a cursor, provided that you implement it properly. The presenation also gives some tips how you can troubleshoot performance problems with loops.

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Do you want to turn your SQL knowledge into a possible career?
This session will show you what options are available to learn about MS SQL Server and make you more knowledgeable about the product
This session will show the many different options available to learn MS SQL Server ranging from free events thru to international conferences
It will also show how to make any conference more affordable and justify the benefits

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Most rookie DBA's do not establish a Service Level Agreements (SLA) with the management and if they do they sometimes just come up with some random numbers for availability. Then when at some point later something goes wrong everybody wonders why it takes so long to bring everything back online.
This Session will teach you how to ask the right questions, analyze your databases and servers and generate from the gathered data a realistic SLA and communicate it to the rest of the comapany

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You probably already know that indexes make your queries go faster. But do you know all the different types of indexes in SQL Server and when to use them? Also with each new release of SQL Server, there are new features that can impact how indexes function and are maintained. Finally, knowing how the different types of indexes work can help you make better indexing choices when tuning your queries.
This presentation will review current SQL Server index structures and options, discuss how they work, when they should be used and how to maintain them. Examples of all the index types such as hash, in-memory, columnstore, filtered, etc… will be shown.
This presentation is a must see for DBAs, Developers, Application Architects and anyone else who is interesting in maintaining high performance SQL Server applications.

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SQL (the language) is not a third generation language, where the developer tells the computer every step it needs to take. It is a declarative language that specifies the required results. SQL Server itself will figure out what steps it takes to get to those results. Most of the time, that works very well.
But sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes a query takes too much time. You need to find out why, so you can fix it. That's where the execution plan comes in. In the execution plan, SQL Server exposes exactly which steps it took for your query, so you can see why it's slow.
However, execution plans can be daunting to the uninitiated. Especially for complex queries. Where do you even start?
In this session you will learn how to obtain execution plans. and how to start reading and understanding them.